Praying Mantis (PDF)

Roger Longrigg was a British author of unusual versatility who wrote both novels and non-fiction, along with plays and screenplays for television, under both his own name and eight other pseudonyms. Born in Edinburgh into a military family, he was at first schooled in the Middle East, but returned to England as a youth and later read history at Magdalen College, Oxford. His early career took him into advertising, but after the publication of two comic novels took up writing full time in 1959. He completed fifty five books, many under his own name, but also Scottish historical fiction as Laura Black; thrillers as Ivor Drummond (for which his chief character, Lady Jennifer Norrington was named by HRF Keating in 'The Times' as the 'True heir of James Bond'); black comedies as Domini Taylor; Frank Parish (which titles feature the adventures of Dan Mallett, a poacher who lives on the edges of legality) - and famously Rosalind Erskine - a name with which he hoaxed all for several years, and who appeared to write a disguised biography of what life was like in a girls boarding school where the classmates ran a brothel for boys from a nearby school. Erskine's 'The Passion Flower Hotel' became a bestseller and was later filmed. Roger Longrigg's work in television included 'Mother Love', a BBC mini-series starring Diana Rigg and David McCallum, and episodes of 'Crown Court' and 'Dial M for Murder'. He died in 2000, aged 70 and was survived by his wife, the novelist Jane Chichester, and three daughters.